AT4W - Crossfire Ending
by The-Darkness-In-The-Bright
Summary: Just a view into Linkara's head during the storyline segment at the end of the Crossfire review.


A/N: I'm soooooo sorry for the lack of uploads/response. I have a lot of mental health issues that have made writing as a whole so very hard to do. Here's something I've been sitting on for a while! I don't own anything you recognize from Atop the Fourth Wall.

Linkara finished reviewing Spiderman: Crossfire with a bad taste in his mouth. Not only was the comic absolutely stupid and ended painfully, but he was putting the finishing touches on something he had no desire to do - shutting down his AI.

He remembered when he first installed Nimue, back before his big turnaround and before he knew he was in danger of turning evil.

Nimue had just been a highly advanced computer program when he and Pollo had set her up, but they had grown to depend on her and care about her over the years. She had run Comicron-1 with diligence and aptitude that had made Linkara proud of himself and of her. He never thought that anything could or would change this estimation of Nimue. _Be careful of your assumptions_, he reminded himself bitterly, _because life has a way of screwing them up royally. _

"You're going to diiiiiiie," Nimue sang maliciously.

She _sang_. The very idea made Linkara feel sick. She was slowly being driven insane by someone or something, and no one had been able to figure out what that was. Without her, Comicron-1 was no longer able to keep the world safe, their apartment was in danger of constant attacks and Jaeris wouldn't be able to get back to his home dimension.

They needed her, but an AI who asked questions like, "What does it feel when someone is losing their mind?" or threatened their lives by telling them that they should be afraid of her, was a dangerous one. If they had exhausted all other options, they didn't have another choice.

They had to shut her off.

"Nimue…I'm done," Linkara said quietly. "As soon as I pull those wires over there, you're off. I don't know if I can ever get you back on again."

All their work into constructing Nimue, working on her, making improvements, and then trying to find out what was wrong with her…it had all been for nothing. And Linkara, who was meant to be the Champion of Earth, was powerless to help her.

"You think you can kill me?!" Nimue rasped hatefully. Linkara found it unsettling to hear any emotion, much less hate, coming from his AI.

"Yeah. I know," he sighed heavily, reaching for the wires. He didn't _want_ any of this, and had Nimue been working at her optimum level, she would have known that, having access to his psychological profile. Every robot he created received affection from him. There were different levels and types of affection, but Linkara loved computers and robots, and Nimue was not an exception.

Suddenly, the ship began to shake violently, sending Linkara toppling over with a startled cry.

"You can die…are you afraid?!" Nimue snarled, her control panel spitting and sparking angrily. "Die…die…die…"

Linkara rebalanced himself and lunged for the wires.

"Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, DIE!" she screamed as Linkara yanked the wires hard, ripping them out of the floor panel. "Help me!" she whimpered and with a small burst of her panel, Nimue was gone.

Linkara gazed at the wires helplessly for a moment before tossing them down. That was it. She was gone. Her last words had been to beg for his help, and all he could offer was oblivion. Was that his fate as a Champion? To stand for justice and honour and all the rest, but to be a complete and total failure at it? He had failed Margaret, himself, Harvey, Pollo, Jaeris…and now, Nimue. How many more people he loved would be hurt because of his incompetence? He rose unhappily and began restoring the systems on his padd and the controls on autopilot, feeling like the world's biggest failure.

"Environmental systems restored." he announced tiredly. He just wanted to go home, drink something potently alocholic and crawl under the covers to forget that he was the so-called Champion of Earth for as long as he could. And he did not care how emotionally unhealthy that was. He had lost Nimue. She may have only been an AI, but he saw her as a very important part of his family. Someone he trusted and could rely on, and who could even provide emotional support. He never had to face a threat alone, since she was always watching.

He had never felt more alone in his life, and he just wanted to _sleep_.

Suddenly, with a few quick beeps, the lights came on again - except that they were red now, not green. The ship began to power up without Linkara's orders, much to his shock.

Something was seriously wrong here. Had Nimue managed to override the physical wiring and back herself up to reboot if someone tried to shut her off manually? Linkara felt a tingle running down his back that he always felt when he was anticipating a bad situation about to happen.

"Nimue?" Silence. What was going on here?

"Nimue? Nimue? Nimue, please answer me," he croaked, knowing that if Nimue had turned herself back on and was still in her current mental state, his life would be forfeit, given her death threats. He wondered how long he had to get to an escape pod.

Then, he heard something that turned his veins to ice and made his eyes widen behind his glasses.

"Your computer is dead, _Champion_."

_No_, Linkara told himself as his jaw fell open and he stared at the viewscreen, which showed an image of a stylized letter of the alphabet. There was only one person who _ever_ called him Champion. _It couldn't be him, no way in hell..._

"Tell me. Are you _afraid_?"

_Vyce._


End file.
